Commandment Liberation. Cause Source
(Jn 13:31-35)
Judas is among the guests, but he does not partake of the Bread. He takes it, yes. But he does not take it at all.
He takes it and leaves, to run after his illusions of having and power. To pursue the occult pact, with the old spiritual guides.
Thus he 'sinks into the night'. Reminder for each of us.
Despite this, divine Glory manifests itself - even in the limit. It is Love without preconditions. Difference between relationship of Faith and code of devotions.
Paradoxical realisation. Source and Summit of the Core of Being. Unveiling and Manifestation of what God Himself is.
We are in the "Hour": announced by the whole unfolding of the Fourth Gospel. Love that does not depend.
Invincible Love, which does not fail even as a result of our uncertainties and inflections, or our denials.
We who are supposed to be His Intimates. Friends and Brothers of the "Son of Man".
"Son of Man" already designates from the First Testament the character of a holiness that surpasses the ancient fiction of the rulers, who piled on top of each other reciting the same script.
The masses remained dry-mouthed: whatever ruler seized power, the petty crowd remained subdued and suffocated.
The same rule was in force in religions, whose leaders lavished the people with a strong horde impulse and the contentment of the gregarious.
In contrast, in the Kingdom of Jesus there must be a lack of ranks - which is why his proposal does not fit in with the ambitions of the authorities, and with the Apostles' own expectations.
They too wanted to 'count'.
But precisely 'Son of Man' is the person according to a criterion of humanisation, not a beast that prevails because it is stronger than the others [cf. Dan 7].
Every man with a heart of flesh - not of beast, nor of stone - is an understanding person, capable of listening, always attentive to the needs of the other, who makes himself available.
All this alludes to the broad dimension of holiness; transmissible to anyone, and as creative as love, therefore all to be discovered!
In the Gospels, the "Son of Man" is the true and full development of the divine plan on humanity.
Such a plan is not hindered by the frequenters of bad places.
It is not a proposal compromised with doctrine-and-discipline religion, which drives back eccentricities.
That of the 'Son of Man' is the kind of holiness that makes us unique, not one that always abhors or exorcises the danger of the unusual.
In short, Jesus entrusts his Testament to the disciples. Mutual union is the Lord's Last Will. With a radical novelty.
Love for one's neighbour was already among the ancient prescriptions, and Christ seems to trace its very formulation (Leviticus 19:18).
Yet the Son does not only allude to compatriots and proselytes of his own religion.
He breaks down barriers hitherto considered obvious.
In fact, mutual love is on the same line as the encounter with oneself - where by grace and vocation lurks a possession of riches, of growing perfections, that want to surface.
From such a treasure chest-knowledge, a solid platform, arises the afflatus of being able to give life: but to increase it, make it full and cheer it up.
Starting not from external conditioning.
In fact, the commandment is 'new' not only because it is edifying and stimulating; even unsurpassable, and capable of supplanting all norms.
Above all, because it reveals one's own Vocation.
It expresses a manifestative bond, which becomes foundation, growing motive and driving force; lucid energy, which gives us the ability to shift our gaze and turn the page.
It introduces a new age, a new realm. Not one-sided.
It is the figure of the victory of Easter, theophany and testimony of its authentic People: "not with measure" (John 3:31-36: 34).
The "without measure" is that of the mystical wedding between the two "natures", of the intimate friendship that penetrates the life of the Father.
"Glory" [irreducible] with special characteristics.
Now the morality of ancient philosophies no longer applies: ours is a vocational and paschal ethic, in the Spirit who renews the face of the earth.
Every purpose is illuminated by the victory of life over death. In this way, behaviour is configured to the Mystery.
We live in Christ, the new man: we are no longer under 'proper' duties and prescriptions.
The baptismal attitude cannot be 'measured'.
The anointing and the call received respond to the intimate passion, the sense of reciprocity and personal fullness.
In this way they move eminent goals: in participation in the fullness of life, excess that cannot be assimilated to conformism and average horizons.
For a pious Israelite to have 'glory' is to give specific 'weight' to one's existence, and to reveal its full value - but sometimes in an elective sense.
It is to flourish our complete 'pondus' and character and worth, which, however, germinate from the whole universe within, and from the different faces that belong to us; even from the 'shadow sides'.
Here is the blossoming of Messianic Peace-Presence; a sense of Friendship with the whole being and roots, with history and the sign of the times.
For the more human we are without duplicity, and the more capable we are of reading events, and the more sensitive we are in grasping the variegated powers - that Someone within something... the more the Heaven within us manifests itself.
This is the emblem of the New Commandment, which marks difference. Integrating; making opposites coexist in us.
New Covenant; new harmony.
Making us complete from within, like Jesus. Glory of the Father, and of humanity.
Mutual union is the Lord's ultimate will. Jesus entrusts his testament to the disciples, with a radical novelty.
Love for one's neighbour was already among the ancient prescriptions, and Christ seems to trace its very formulation (Lev 19:18).
But the Son of God does not only allude to compatriots and proselytes of the same religion. He breaks down barriers hitherto considered obvious.
Yet the great novelty is in the fundamental motivation.
Mutual love is on the same line as the encounter with oneself - where by grace and vocation lurks a possession of riches, growing perfections, that want to surface.
From such a treasure chest, knowledge, solid platform, arises the afflatus of being able to give life: but to increase it, make it full and cheer it up - starting not from external conditioning.
In fact, the commandment is 'new' not only because it is edifying and stimulating, but first and foremost because it reveals one's vocation.
It is a manifestative bond, which becomes foundation, growing motive and driving force; lucid energy, which gives us the ability to shift our gaze and turn the page: it ushers in a new age, a new kingdom.
It is the figure of the victory of Easter, theophany and testimony of its authentic people: "not with measure" (Jn 3:31-36: 34).
The "without measure" is that of the mystical wedding between the two "natures", of the intimate friendship that penetrates the life of the Father.
Even in the waiting, the boundlessness vivifies existence and fulfils it, coming from the experience of substance and vertigo.
It is the life of the Son in us: perception of a constitutive 'being'. Therefore without losing interest in the time of absence.
And of being able to change; intuition of a different (irreducible) "glory" with special characteristics.
Now the morality of the ancient religions no longer applies: ours is a vocational and paschal ethics, in the Spirit that renews the face of the earth.
Every purpose is illuminated by the victory of life over death. In this way, behaviour is configured to the Mystery.
We live in Christ, the new man: we are no longer under 'proper' duties and prescriptions. The baptismal attitude cannot be "measured".
The anointing and the call received respond to the intimate passion, the sense of reciprocity and personal fullness, which transcend.
Thus they move eminent goals: in participation in the fullness of life, excess that cannot be assimilated to conformism and average horizons.
For a pious Israelite to have glory is to give specific weight to one's existence, and to reveal its full value - but in an elective sense.
"Was it true glory?" - Manzoni asks himself: from glory-vain and vain it rolls down. Quite another is glory as the real Presence of God.
Only if we are placed on the same wave of beauty and fascination as the 'Son of Man' do we contribute to not letting it fade or exclude it: the more we are human without duplicity, the more Heaven that is in us manifests itself.
The badge, the emblem of the full witness of children and outspoken communities is not its own production.
It retains an indestructible quality of elasticity and relationship that does not dismay, nor does it drop its arms: it gives breath.
This is the New Commandment, which marks difference.
Mutual union is the Lord's ultimate will. Jesus entrusts his testament to the disciples, with a radical novelty.
Love for one's neighbour was already among the ancient prescriptions, and Christ seems to trace its very formulation (Lev 19:18).
But the Son of God does not only allude to compatriots and proselytes of the same religion. He breaks down barriers hitherto considered obvious.
Yet the great novelty is in the fundamental motivation.
Mutual love is on the same line as the encounter with oneself - where by grace and vocation lurks a possession of riches, growing perfections, that want to surface.
From such a treasure chest, knowledge, solid platform, arises the afflatus of being able to give life: but to increase it, make it full and cheer it up - not from external conditioning and tasks to be performed or exploited.
In fact, the commandment is 'new' not only because it is edifying and stimulating, but first and foremost because it reveals one's vocation and the intimate life of God, the relationship between the Father and the Son, assumed.
It is a manifestative bond, which becomes a foundation, a growing motive and a driving force; lucid energy, which gives us the ability to shift our gaze and turn the page: it ushers in a new age, a new kingdom.
The "new" commandment of love - Christ's only delivery - is the figure of the Easter victory, theophany and testimony of his authentic people: "not with measure" (Jn 3:31-36: 34).
The "without measure" is that of the mystical wedding between the two "natures", of the intimate friendship that penetrates the life of the Father.
Even in the waiting, the boundlessness vivifies existence and fulfils it, coming from the experience of substance and vertigo - already in itself.
It is the life of the Son in us: perception of a constitutive 'being'. Therefore without losing interest in the time of absence.
And of being able to change; intuition of a different (irreducible) "glory" with special characteristics.
Now the morality of religions no longer applies: ours is a vocational and paschal ethics, in the Spirit that renews the face of the earth.
Every purpose, every role, every ministry, is illuminated by the victory of life over death.
In this way, behaviour is configured to the Mystery.
We live in Christ, the new man: we are no longer under 'proper' duties and prescriptions. The baptismal attitude cannot be measured.
The anointing and the call received respond to the intimate passion, the sense of reciprocity and personal fullness, which transcend.
Thus they move eminent goals: in participation in the fullness of life, excess that cannot be assimilated to conformism and average horizons.
For a pious Israelite to have glory is to give specific weight to one's existence, and to reveal its full value - but in an elective sense.
"Was it true glory?" - Manzoni asks himself: from glory-vain and vain it rolls down. Quite another glory as the real Presence of God.
Here are the disagreements between community and humanity (persons in fullness); liturgy and reality, prayer and listening, theology and life, proclamations and behind the scenes.
While the Synoptics proclaim universal love, the author of the Fourth Gospel is concerned that the unexpressed testimony of the children is not a blatant denial of the holiness preached to others [by the 'elect'].
As Paul VI said: 'Contemporary man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers'. Not only for an appropriate and due evaluation of moral coherence, but because they refer to the Mystery, to divine Gold.
Only if we are placed on the same wave of beauty and fascination as the "Son of Man" do we contribute to not letting it fade away or exclude it: the more human we are without duplicity, the more Heaven is manifested within us.
Of course, it seems impossible to love "like" Him (v.34), but here the Greek expression has another way of reading it. The original term does not merely indicate an ideal horizon or the lofty measure - unattainable by effort.
"Kathòs" [adverb and conjunction] is endowed with generative as well as comparative value.
The key expression of the passage can be understood as: "Love one another because I have loved you unconditionally" or "Because I have loved you unconditionally, on such a wave of life, you can now love one another".
It means: making one's neighbour feel already enabled - adequate and free - is the only unreduced mark of faith in Christ.
In short, the Father is not the God of prescriptions: he does not absorb our energies, but generates and dilates them.
He does not pretend to suffocate and exhaust us.
The badge, the emblem of the full witness of children and outspoken communities is not its own production.
It retains an indestructible quality of elasticity and relationship that does not dismay, nor does it drop arms: it gives breath.
It is not the work of fanatical pro- and anti-subversives, nor of a devout individualism that preaches the 'salvation of one's own soul' - an exasperation of religious piety and the pedestrian retributive morality of 'merits'.
It is the unfolding of the action of the Son of Man (v. 31) that empowers the downtrodden and petty.
The Master is not content to be a gregarious follower, like the heterodox Judas, a zealous apostle in appearance.
"Son of man" indicates Jesus who manifests the Father, the man who makes manifest the divine condition.
The Person who in his human fullness reflects the wholesome design of the Origins - possibility for all reborn in Christ.
The carnal feeling is in a hurry to regulate itself on the basis of goals and titles; of achievements and success, or of the beloved's perfections and prestige.
It sets boundaries.
Divine Love (and that of children) is disproportionate, it has a different conduct: it prevents, it recovers; it does not break understanding, it helps.
Non-wandering Love knows the small, the uncertain and the weak. It knows that they only grow through the experience of the Gift, otherwise they get stuck.
If the Free does not supplant merit, no one grows stronger; on the contrary, all - even the energetic - shrink. Condemned to an external cloak of norms and doctrines, or of disembodied abstractions and sophistications.That is why the 'Son of Man' - the genuine and full development of the divine plan for mankind - is not hindered by public sinners, but by those who suppose of themselves and would have the ministry of making it known!
Divine glory has nothing to do with uniforms, coats, cockades or epidermal badges; it is manifested in the Communion without prior interdictions, in the service that is rendered to the inadequate and unmanifested - from which to hope for zero.
Nothing that can then be supplemented by adding a little something - a mere 'completion' - to the norms of the First Covenant [which did not insist on God-likeness but on mass obedience].
Fundamentalist inclinations, or circumstantial and à la page manners, the lust for worldly prestige - in reality - divide.
The conviviality of differences encompasses, dilates, accentuates the amalgam and unites, enriching. It opens to the unusual and unimaginable.
Founders of religions propose a worldview and are static models of behaviour.
They do not propose a growing offer (Jn 14:12: "greater works"). Widely personal invitations - deep and sharp, more so than their own.
Jesus is not a predictable 'model' to be imitated.
He is above all - we repeat - a Motive and an Engine: let us love like and because Christ. Living by Him, each one.
We risk everything because we are within an Event that we have seen, within a Relationship that not only persuades, but leads us and generates beyond; not in a downward spiral.
We are no longer under a Law that appoints God by obligation, but in the challenge of a gesture that re-creates and gradually fulfils, making our weakness strong.
So much so that shadow sides become resources and amazement. All without depersonalising; on the contrary, emphasising uniqueness.
This is the 'new' commandment.
"Kainòs" is a Greek term that marks difference, eclipses the rest - in the sense that it sums up, surpasses and replaces. It supersedes all commandments: obvious and conditional.
And there will not be a better one, because our hope is not Heaven (ready), but Heaven on earth.
More than the too far of the old final Paradise with invariable fare and predictable fulfilment. Modic, conformist, sectoral; even there articulated according to roles.
And pyramidal.
To deepen the evangelical theme of Glory:
Give your life and quickly betray
(Jn 13:21-33.36-38)
"I will lay down my life for you" - in order to lead.
The apostles would give everything to win, not to lose; to triumph, not to be mocked or fed, and to heal the world.
Better to negotiate. Rather than wash each other's feet!
That is why the Lord wants each of us diners to ask the question whether we are not involved in some betrayal.
Not to blame and plant ourselves there, but to meet each other: each is an admirer and an adversary of the Master.
We are splendour and darkness - coexisting sides, more or less integrated, even competitive.
It is the Resurrection that lurks in the effervescence of life, redeeming then the selfish motivations, and transfiguring into collimating energies elsewhere the dark and frictional sides.
Aspects that become like baby food, for each new genesis - which once they have emerged [planted in the earth and pulled up by the roots] can become strengths.
The road is only blocked in front of the person who continues to have his soul conditioned by old or à la page opinions and evils.
Nothing is revealed there; the miracle of the transmutation of our abyss will not take place.
The liturgy of the Word brings us into contact with a Jesus pervaded by a sense of weakness; his loneliness becomes acute.
In mission, we too are sometimes at the mercy of despondency: perhaps God has deceived us, dragging us into an absurd enterprise?
No, we are not deceived and abandoned to an ignoble logic, to a perverse generation: the power of life itself is littered with tombstones and has various faces. Beneficial influences.
The favourable path is devoid of prestige, recognised tasks and majesty: they tend to placate us, and not dig in.
It is often disturbances that improve judgement.
The dripping can arouse the voice of the most authentic part of ourselves, become an incisive echo to find ourselves, and complete ourselves - bringing forward the pioneering heart, instead of holding it back.
The road of trial and imbalance awakens us from the harmful ageing of the spirit.
It recovers the opposing energies, the opposing sides, and the incompatible desires, the (allied) passions to which we have not given space.
Even in the torturing experience of limitation, God wants to reach out to our variegated seed, so that it does not allow itself to be plundered - not even by the dismay of having drawn the morsel together and having been the traitor.
Nothing is crippling.
There is only one toxic, chronic sphere of death, which annihilates everything and has no active germs in it: that which obscures and detests primary change.There the horizon narrows and all that remains is a chasm - or the blandness that infects to make us give up, and relentlessly retreat, deny and regress again.
All that remains are the fears, the half-choices, the neuroses silenced by the compromise that attempts to fill the precious sense of emptiness.
We are faced with a Lord reduced to nothing, so that we too can understand ourselves in our defections; in the episodes in which we camp useless and deviant contrivances, all measured, that fatigue in vain.
The story of the incomprehensible loneliness of Christ beside the traitor and the renegade is written in our hearts.
It is all reality, but for salvation, for renewed intimacy and conviction.
The missionary vocation is extinguished and stagnates only by ballast of calculation and common mentality - where the naked poverty of the discordant being that we are does not shake (nor tinkle).
Without the abandonment undergone, man does not become universal, rather he tends to attenuate the best instruments of God's power.
On that steppe terrain He is giving us the friendship of a shift in our gaze.
Without the restlessness of deep and humiliating upheaval - without the surrender of one's humanity in extreme weakness - our unsatisfied puppet lingers, content.
Despite its admiration for values, it too becomes a residual larva. A caricature of the being we could be: women and men with a contemplative eye.
Completed from within, like Jesus.
To internalise and live the message:
What do I draw when the Lord asks me to risk?
What do unfriendly gestures and rejection mean to you, in the paradoxical outcomes?
Glory to one another: the Seed within and the entourage without
The Greatest Witness
(Jn 5:31-47)
"Christians are a priestly people for the world. Christians should make the living God visible to the world, bear witness to Him and lead it to Him".
"Jesus loved men in the Father, from the Father - and so loved them in their true being, in their reality."
[Pope Benedict].
Jesus does not love catwalks. The Son remains immersed in the Father: he does not receive support and glory from fashionable men or ancient perimeters, because he is not imbued with normal human cultural religious expectations.
They prevent the perception of what we do not know, therefore they conceal the exceptional nature of the particular name; they drench the head and the gaze with current and pedestrian normality, which condition, dissociate, plagiarise, make external.
Predictable expectations delay the germination of the Kingdom of God and its alternative character - in the living experience of further exchanges; of other interpersonal qualities, in the completeness of being that belongs to us.
The specific weight of this unprecedented present and future, which corresponds because it is part of our intimate essence, otherwise remains in the hands of obvious opinions and the usual cheap dragging, which does not expose.
The pathology of reputation, of accredited convictions and the concordant praxis on the side, precludes winging it. But every short and rigid hope rejects God for God's sake.
Only that which is not petrified and conventional bears witness to Christ the Lord, the likeness of the Father who does not reject our eccentricities: he wants to make them grow - recovering their flourishing opposites.
The same 'no moments' that crumble prestige are also a spring to activate us and not stagnate in the same old situations; regenerating, moving forward elsewhere.
Failures that put fame in the balance serve to make us realise what we had not noticed, thus deviating from a conformist destiny.
In short, our Heaven is intertwined with our transmuting flesh, our earth and our dust: it lies within and below, not behind the clouds or in the manners.
In the paradoxical deification of the coming God, the all-worldly mentality of every purist or conformist circle experiences a reversal. Cipher of the great Wisdom of nature.
This is how Master Lü Hui-ch'ing comments on a famous passage from the Tao Tê Ching (LXXVI): "Heaven is on high for ch'ì, Earth is on low for form: ch'ì is soft and weak, form is hard and strong".
The trial-religious aspect to which the story of Jesus [even his intimates] was subjected often appears in John.
The aspirations of the pious men of old are strangely hinged on the need to make a body and recognise one another. Hence always 'those from before'.
Their world, centred on the honour one receives: the theme is Glory - which, however, becomes a dialogue between the deaf. 'Doxa' in the Greek world means manifestation of prestige, honour, esteem.
In Hebrew, the term Glory [Kabôd] means specific, qualitative weight (and manifestation) of the transcendent.
Thus the glory that man gives to God - so to speak - is the opposite of the Hellenist criterion: the principle and evaluation typical of the strutting, 'free', independent and self-confident hero [because of the prestige around].Conversely, here is 'glory' as humble and grateful recognition, but weighty in the Christian sense: familiar and humanising.
The woman and man called to a particular mission discover in themselves and in reality the conditions of perfection and imperfection.
They guide us to innate fulfilment - not volatile - and the common good, according to specific, personal contribution.
No one is called to artificial prestige and strength, adding something to the honour of what is already in one's vocational essence - sometimes in paradoxical completeness, for a conviviality of differences.
The Glory of Jesus himself was only the awareness and confession of being the Father's Envoy.
That is all we are entitled to - even in the sense of growth, of importance in itself, more than 'those who realise'.
The devout groups unfortunately not infrequently moved to a level of worldly aspirations - just with a strange mixture of criteria.
So they ended up appreciating each other in circles, patting each other on the back.
Thus - content to be confirmed - they still tend to accentuate the characteristics of what is normally identified as the spiritual dimension, and that easily becomes tainted with the compromise of the artificial external look.
Instead, the inner balance of the Called by Name is re-established through dreams and the congenital character - rather than through weighing and the raw influences of conscious life, which distract and level the soul.
In fact, on such a slope, one tends to adopt attitudes that do not fit the very original vocation; on the contrary, they expose the consciousness to dissociations and conditionings that distort it.
The Way in the Spirit of Freedom, Love, Newness, is inspired by a dimension of Mystery and spontaneity all to be discovered: Exodus.
Such a character proceeds beyond compartments, denominations filled with established solutions, with conformist thinking hooked on an unambiguous way of reading the Scriptures and testimonies.
Cages, even 'spiritual' ones, guilt every different, inculcate brooding, curb the most fruitful eccentricities.
In order to ensure 'ecclesial' compactness, the various stigmas everywhere play on the inadequacy of the majority interpretation - and guilt typical of the particular 'container'.
Such framings do not reawaken creativity, rather they anaesthetise it according to internal clichés: where precisely they take "glory from one another" (v.44).
Frames do not teach one to launch oneself personally and at the right time.
The rhythm, too, does not descend on dissimilar inclinations, on their atypicality - a unique richness that prepares the unrepeatable and extravagant New that we do not already know.
Instruction booklets harass us with other people's progressions and goals to reach, all of which turn out to be yet to be surpassed - and outside our own taste and intimate sense; projected into the future, impersonal.
The 'spiritual' path of the pack reflects the life, judgement or idea of the leader and his 'magic' circle; the forma mentis of a generation or a class.
In this way, established trajectories do not announce changes and authentic encounters, which take place in the propulsive, transversal simplicity of the concrete unpredictable.
Stubborn models do not make us aware of a God Person: He calls to life through impulses that would be new blood for transmutation.
The Eternal One communicates Himself in what He speaks within.
Precisely in the needs - not obsessing energies known only to the soul, of conflicts over useless duties, which neither solve anything nor transmit happiness.
The 'egocentric' religious ideology and all directed thought brand crises as inadequacies to collective purposeful action - thus condemning instincts.
But instincts manifest themselves as escapes of the individual heart that seeks new listening, desires to surface and realise; it wants to integrate in its own way, or to chart paths that prepare for the future.
Not infrequently, the evocation of the usual delimited rituals - e.g. of 'charisma' - as well as the concatenation of normative constitutions, deaden the character in a levelled atmosphere, which drinks of recollected attunements.
They are not our land.
The barnyard of the 'system' operates according to directives and roles.
But compartments limit the range of action, although they seemingly dilute it.
Trivial inclusions 'teach' us to be content with half-steps already chiselled into the little and not over the top.
This is so as not to allow for the regenerations that count.
The self-referential clan often takes away space from any possibility that moves from there.
This makes one dependent on applause. It slows down, when conversely we could dare....
Lest we continue to perceive healthy restlessness. Differences that would redeem us from subordination.
In fact, the one-sided imprint does not respect nature, so it reinforces what it says it wants to banish.
A disaster for a life of meaning and witness in Christ.The Lord had as his only daily worship - precisely - the emptiness of social support (which did not accept his deviations) and the fullness of beginnings in the Father.
"But I have a greater witness than John, for the works that the Father has given me to do, the very works that I do, testify of me that the Father has sent me" (John 5:36).
To internalise and live the message:
How do you safeguard community living and your transpositions of Faith in Christ?
What is the point of homologation in satisfaction, and where do you place your Preciousness?
